Thursday, December 11, 2008

Yahoo! Assists....Put Money Back Into Your Pockets Now!

How would you like to save yourself a bundle of advertising dollars and heart ache all at the same time? Well, you can. And it can be done IMMEDIATELY by using the 'Assist' metric from your Yahoo! Sponsored Search account.

This is a "no brainer" people! I've even broken it down into a simple basketball analogy so that it's easier to understand. Every online advertiser should be interested in understanding this.

The Yahoo! Assists Sports Analogy:

Basketball coaches have to make decisions every day on which players will play based on metrics such as Conversions and Assists. Here’s a scenario….

Coach's Decision Without Factoring In Assists

Player A scores 2 conversions (for 4 points) and Player B scores 12 conversions (for 24 points). If the coach only measures performance based on conversions, then which player will he bench in the next game? Player A, of course, due to poor performance.

Coach's Decision Factoring In Assists

We find that while Player A only scored 2 conversions (for 4 points) he did have 14 assists which attributed to 28 extra team points. With the Assist data now in hand, will the coach put in Player A for the next game? Of course! Even though he didn't convert well himself, Player A was still very valuable to the success of the team!

Imagine the outcome of the game had Player A been pulled from the game strictly based on Conversion performance?

What The Hell Does Basketball Have To Do With Saving Money In Online Advertising???

The same basketball analogy can be used for managing budgets for your search and display campaigns. Many advertisers really only look at Conversions as a measurement of campaign performance/success. Because of this, valuable keywords and display ads are being tossed out. Right now, bids on keywords are being lowered or paused because advertisers don't know that their non-branded keywords, for example, are driving conversions for other keywords. Budgets on display ads are being lowered because advertisers don't realize that their display ads really ARE successful at driving conversions for their other campaigns, like search (PPC).

Imagine the outcome of a campaign had the budget been lowered without factoring in Assists.

Remember though, just because a keyword or display ad does not convert well on it’s own, it does not always mean that it’s a poor performer. An advertiser must look at other critical metrics before making crucial online campaign budgeting decisions. But the only way to measure this, is to use what we analysts like to call a campaign attribution metric.

The Assist metric in your Yahoo Search Marketing account is a campaign/keyword attribution metric. In addition, using 'Full Analytics' (now available for free in all Yahoo Search Marketing accounts) you can get cross channel tracking to see if your display ads drive conversions to your other ads, such as search for example.STOP MAKING ONLINE BUDGETING MISTAKES NOW!!!Try using the 'Conversion Only' or 'Full Analytics' solutions from Yahoo! (in your Sponsored Search account), that provide the campaign attribution 'Assist' metric. Along with metrics such as Conversions and ROI, Assists will help you avoid from making those critical budgeting mistakes and will immediately put money back into your pocket!

If you currently had an account with Yahoo and have an account manager, then you can work through them to get the full blown Yahoo! Web Analytics application.

If not, then you can reach out to one of our many consulting partners listed here: http://web.analytics.yahoo.com/ywacn.php

The tool that I was describing in the post is not from Yahoo! Web Analytics. The Assist metric actually comes from an analytics solution we have called Full Analytics. Full Analytics can be accessed for free within your account if you currently run Yahoo! Sponsored Search campaigns with us.